Letter No. 13: Anchor and Engine

I like beginning grape runs while most of my corner of the world is asleep. Usually, I leave around one in the morning, when the roads are quiet and mostly clear. Construction sites that will become crowded with workers and equipment a few hours later sit vacant. The air is cooler, traffic is lighter, and the steady passage of mile markers offers a kind of company without conversation.

If I become tired, I pull over and take a ten-minute nap. I have learned not to negotiate with fatigue. Ten minutes of sleep beside a quiet highway can sometimes restore more than an hour spent insisting I am still awake.

On this particular run, I intended to leave at one. Sleep, however, was not cooperating. By 10:30, lying in bed no longer seemed useful, so I climbed into the truck and began the journey to Loomis, California, where a harvest of Petite Sirah was waiting for my winery. By the time I returned home, the round trip would account for nearly thirty-eight hours of driving.

The trailer was empty as I headed south of Bozeman toward the Idaho border. There is a mountain pass along that route where I have come to expect elk and deer at almost any time of year. This trip was no different. Their shapes appeared near the edges of my headlights, briefly visible before slipping back into the darkness.

By first light, I was in Twin Falls. Nevada followed—a long stretch of road with little of anything, including dependable cell service. Reno barely registered. When I am pulling a trailer, even an empty one, most of my attention belongs to the traffic around me. Other drivers make quick decisions, and towing requires me to anticipate them before their decisions become my problem.

Then there is Donner Pass.

I would like to go on record as saying that I do not enjoy Donner Pass. Coming out of Reno, the road feels as though it climbs for nearly fifty miles. Once I finally reach the summit, it spends more than fifty miles surrendering every foot of elevation on the descent toward Auburn and the Sacramento Valley. It is long, slow, congested, and apparently designed to make a driver wonder whether California truly wants visitors.

I eventually reached the vineyard, dropped off the empty harvest bins, and had dinner with friends. I expected the grapes to be ready around ten the next morning, but word came that they would be ready at seven. After that many hours on the road, the chance to begin the long drive home three hours earlier than expected felt like a gift.

By morning, the empty capacity behind me had been filled. Fourteen thousand pounds of Petite Sirah rested in the bins, secured by straps stretched across the trailer.

The return trip used the same truck, the same trailer, and many of the same roads, but it was not the same journey. From the moment I began pulling away from the vineyard, I knew there was an anchor behind me.

The roads leading out were narrow and winding, riddled with inclines that seemed to rise from one turn before the truck had fully recovered from the last. Acceleration required patience. Each curve had to be considered before I reached it, and braking was no longer a decision made where I wanted to slow down. It was a decision made well in advance.

The people who lived along those roads had probably encountered loaded grape trailers before. Their patience and accommodation did not always match that expectation. Cars appeared quickly behind me and followed closely, as though moving nearer to the trailer might persuade it to climb faster.

From their windshields, they saw a slow truck occupying the road. From the driver’s seat, I felt the weight they could not see.

Once I reached the interstate, the long climb toward Donner Summit began almost immediately. The stretch that had carried me downhill into the Sacramento Valley the day before now asked the truck to recover every foot of elevation. The grapes resisted the climb, making their presence known with every incline.

Going uphill, the load was an anchor. The truck worked steadily toward the summit, and every mile of elevation had to be earned.

Eventually, the road reached its highest point and began descending toward Reno. Gravity took hold of the same weight that had slowed the climb, and the anchor became an engine. The load surrendered to the slope and began pushing from behind with a force that had to be anticipated and held in check.

I had to think farther ahead. I watched brake lights several vehicles beyond the one directly in front of me. I allowed more room between myself and the traffic ahead. I considered every change of speed before the road demanded it because, once that much weight began moving downhill, waiting until the last moment was no longer an option.

The same load required two different kinds of discipline. On the climb, I needed patience and enough power to keep pulling. On the descent, I needed restraint and the judgment to hold back what gravity wanted to hurry forward.

Carrying the grapes made me more aware of everyone around me, but it also made me more aware of myself. A quick movement of the steering wheel or a late decision with an empty trailer might be recoverable. With the loaded trailer behind me, every choice reached farther than my hands.

Responsibility lengthens the distance between noticing and acting.

Every so often, the backdraft from the trailer carried the smell of grapes into the cab. The fragrance arrived without warning, filling the truck for a moment before disappearing again into the air rushing past me. Each time it returned, I was reminded that I was not simply hauling weight.

Behind me was the beginning of a future vintage. The grapes had already spent an entire season becoming what they were. Sun, soil, water, weather, and the work of the vineyard had brought them this far. Soon they would arrive at the winery, and another kind of work would begin.

I imagined the first decisions waiting for me at home. The fruit would need to be received, handled, and given the right beginning. There would be opportunities to guide it and plenty of opportunities to interfere with what was already there. My responsibility was not to force the grapes into becoming something they were not. It was to give them the care and conditions they needed to begin revealing their full potential.

The anticipation of that work became another kind of engine. Gravity pushed the trailer down the mountain, but the promise inside the grapes drew me toward the winery. One engine had to be held back. The other made me eager to get home.

Somewhere along the road, I realized the load was doing more than changing the way the truck handled the journey. It was changing the way I handled myself. It required patience when I wanted speed, restraint when momentum offered it, and attention long before the moment of need.

Before I could begin guiding what the grapes might become, the responsibility of carrying them had already begun shaping me.

On the way to California, I was traveling toward something I wanted. On the way home, I was responsible for something I had received.

The load was an anchor on the climb and an engine on the descent. Whenever its fragrance entered the cab, it became another kind of engine—a reminder of what might be possible if I carried it well.

The wine had not begun, but the stewardship had.

Until next Sunday…

George

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